„luian laga” university of sibiu
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„LUCIAN BLAGA” UNIVERSITY OF SIBIU
„ANDREI ȘAGUNA” FACULTY OF THEOLOGY
THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOXY – BRIDGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
(summary)
SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR:
PhD. Rev. Prof. Aurel Pavel
PHD. CANDIDATE:
Rev. Marian Bădulescu
SIBIU
2017
Contents
Introduction................................. 4
I.The specificity of the Romanian Orthodoxy - internal and external missionary aspects...... 10
II. The external and internal Mission of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the Middle Ages (15th and 18th
centuries). Main events, princes and romanian hierarchs………………. 32
1. The Mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy in the time of Stephan the Great (1453-1504)… 35
2. The Romanian Orthodoxy reflected in the diplomatic correspondence. The Clergy diplomats.. 43
3. The Romanian Orthodoxy during the reign of Neagoe Basarab(1512-1521)… 48
4. The relationships with the West during the reign of Petru Cercel (1583-1585)….. 57
5. The Romanian Orthodoxy reflected in the diplomatic correspondence of the princes Mihai Viteazul (1593-1601),
Vasile Lupu (1634-1653) şi Matei Basarab (1632-1654)..… 59
6. Nicolae Milescu Spătaru – scholar and orthodox diplomat ….. 64
7. Dimitrie şi Antioh Cantemir: The contribution of a scholar and a diplomat to the mission of the Romanian
Orthodoxy ……………………………………………….. 66
8. The Saints of the Romaian Orthodoxy: the family of the prince Constantin Brâncoveanu …. 80
9. Romanian Orthodoxy in Transylvania ………………………………. 83
10.The missionary work of Metropolitan Varlaam of Moldavia ...................... 87
11.The inter church relations of the Romanian Orthodoxy............................. 89
12. The contribution of the deacon Coresi to the mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy ……. 92
13. Metropolitan Dosoftei al Moldovia and the „Psaltirea Şcheiană” ………………. 93
14. Mitropolitan Antim Ivireanul (1708-1716) and his missionary work ………. 96
15. The hesychast influence on the Romanian missionary monachism ...................... 100
16. The mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy through the philantropic activity and through gestures of piety (visits,
pilgrimages, prayers and veneration of relics of saints)………….. 104
17.Romanian Orthodoxy and its shadows when passing from the Middle Age to the Modern Age
…………………………………………… 107
III. The Mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy in the 19th and 20th century..................... 109
1. The national conscience and the latinism of the Romanian Orthodoxy………… 110
2. The Romanian orthodoxy and the dialectics of the „forms without fund” …………. 112
3. Metropolitan Andrei Saguna and the principales of administrative organisation of the Romanian
Orthodoxy………………………………………………. 115
4. Ortodoxia românească în diaspora Romanian Orthodoxy in diaspora…………………. 120
5.Inter War intellectuals in the job of the Romanian Orthodoxy …………….. 124
6. Nationalist mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy…………………….. 130
7. Church and state: Romanian Orthodoxy in the sovietic communism and in the communist nationalism
………………………………………………………………….…… 133
8. „The Army of the Lord”, a secular missionary association in the Romanian Orthodoxy….. 137
9. Romanian Orthodoxy in communism witnesses and martyrs……………….. 141
10. The preparation of the missionary opening of the Romanian Orthodoxy towards West…… 147
11. Pilgrimages and canonization of saints factors of unity of Romanian Orthodoxy .. 148
12. Misionary monachism of the Romanian Orthodoxy…………………… 150
IV. The mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy after the 1989………………………. 152
1. Redefinition of the relation Church State……………………… 153
2. Missionary tendencies of the Romanian Orthodoxy after 1989……………….. 154
3. Contemporary Orthodox Romanian Diaspora…………………………….. 157
4. Romanian Orthodoxy in Europe………………………………………. 164
5. Nationalism of the actual Romanian Orthodoxy…………………………….. 168
6. Relations with other cults and the visit of Pope John Paul II in Romania (1999)………………………. 171
7. Mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy in the context of secularization………………. 175
Conclusions ………………………………………. 177
General Bibliographys……………………………………… 207
Key words: internal mission, external mission, Middle Ages, Romanian Orthodox Church, diplomatic
relations, religion - culture, diaspora, monasticism, religious associations, church -
The main thesis of our work is to highlight the historical and the cultural sources that are
relevant to completing the theological missionary painting from a long historical period. For the academic
theological research, the importance of the theme resides in the possibility of highlighting the historical,
liturgical, dogmatic and missionary tradition of the Romanian Orthodoxy in its interdisciplinary
connections. Obviously, the specialized theological language is different from the one in the missiology
textbooks, but convergent in the selected contents. The difficulties of such a complex approach arise with
regard to the fluent organization of the material, with the "translation" of the profane information into the
theological language and the possibility of omitting relevant historical and cultural materials. The claim of
an exhaustive research may be the sole assumption of the present work. The novelty of the paper is the
proposed goal, which has a theoretical aspect (To what extent has the Romanian Orthodoxy established
during the history cultural, political, diplomatic and social ties between East and West through its
missionary activity, internal and external?) and a practical aspect (How can Romanian Orthodoxy
constitute a repertoire of missionary solutions, applied to current soteriological problems?).
Referring to the specificity of the Romanian Orthodoxy (in its dimensions of institution, its own
dogmatic approach, spirituality and ethos), the metaphor "bridge between the East and the West" appears
in the volume of Romanian Orthodoxy (E.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 1992). The etymology of the theme
imposes a kaleidoscope of terms (eg symphony, cult, culture, nation, people, nationalism, community,
universality, tolerance, ecumenism, synthesis, balance, etc.) that are dynamically related to each other.
Firstly, the common theological approaches can focus on the links between the dogmatic
formulations of the first ecumenical Councils and their attachment to the cult of the Church, using the
Romanian liturgical language. Secondly, the study of church history can enhance the value of the cultural
(not only proselytist-polemical) interaction between Eastern and Western Christianity and how it
crystallized in the Romanian way of ecclesial assimilation (Eastern theology of Latin expression with the
administrative church organization of Slavonic influence and vocabulary, the synthesis of church
architectural styles, reproduction of the Western academic life in the Romanian monasteries, and so on.).
Also, the historical relations between the Romanian Orthodoxy and the other national Orthodoxies
(Eastern, Balkan and Eastern European Patriarchates), from the Middle Ages to the present, contain an
insufficiently explored diplomatic documentary thesaurus. We believe that scientific theological research
will confirm and develop the understanding of the Romanian Orthodoxy as a "bridge" in the sense of
"binder" (a factor of closeness, understanding and reconciliation between seemingly irreconcilable
theologians, mentality and diplomatic positions). Third, the theological research has the task of drawing
the lines of force of the Romanian Orthodox missiology. An important theme of the internal mission
research is the assessment of the degree of inculturation at the Romanians. The historical tradition of the
internal mission revealed positive and negative strategic issues, successes and pastoral failures.
Contributions to the research of the history of the Romanian Orthodox mission are indisputable,
but the inter-Orthodox missionary experience of the Middle Ages (the Romanian presence in the Holy
Land, Mount Athos, Ukraine and Russia, but also the activity of the representatives of other peoples in the
Romanian Church) and the contributions of the Romanian Orthodoxy at the Ecumenical Movement
requires a permanent adaptation to today's missionary needs and, moreover, their use in planning the lines
of action of future missionary actions. From the perspective of theological research, the stage of historical
and missionary argumentation about the capacity of the Romanian theology to establish links between the
East and the West made important progress in the sec 20th
century (The works of Nicolae Iorga,
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Dan Zamfirescu, Prof. Dumitru Staniloae, Nichifor Crainic, Metropolitan
Nicolae Corneanu, Rev. prof. dr. Ion Bria, Dr. Nifon Mihăiţă, Rev. prof. dr. Ilie Moldovan). In the case of
theological disciplines, after 1989, studies, textbooks, and papers have been published, which cover
aspects of the theme. The literature from the main theological attraction points (Russian and Greek)
channeled both the knowledge of the respective "Orthodoxy" and its own image of the academic theology.
Romanian Orthodoxy was defined by reference to the Greek and Russian visions of Orthodoxy. However,
a group of outstanding Romanian theologians have contributed to the decantation and the definition of a
specific Romanian theology. The issue of the relations of the Romanian culture with the West has been
addressed in numerous papers, printed in volumes, magazines or leaflets, but there has not yet been made
any comprehensive synthesis of the history of these relations. Until the printing of Academic Scores that
research diachronically and typologically, the relations of the Romanian culture with the West, it is
necessary to dissociate from the multitude of these relations the cultural-theological hypostasis pursued in
our work.
The specialized theological language has a lower weight in the composition and the writing of
our research, motivated, on one hand, by the need to quote the studied sources as faithful as possible, and
on the other hand, by the obligation to extend the language of missiology in relevant areas of the study.
Establishing the convergence between the selected contents has remained the main touchstone of the
work. The difficulties of such a complex approach arise regarding the fluent organization of the material,
the "translation" of the profane information into the theological language and the possibility of omitting
relevant historical and cultural materials.
In the first chapter of our paper we tried to scientifically argue and document the idea of the
Romanian Orthodox bridge between East and West and how the study of church history can enhance the
value of the cultural (not only proselytist-polemic) interaction between Eastern and Western Christianity
as it was synthesized and crystallized in the Romanian way of ecclesial assimilation. Theological research
has the task of drawing the lines of force of the Romanian Orthodox missiology. Contributions to the
research of the history of the Romanian Orthodox mission are indisputable, but the inter-Orthodox
missionary experience of the Middle Ages and the contributions of the Romanian Orthodoxy within the
Ecumenical Movement require a permanent adaptation to today's missionary needs.
The first aspect of our approach was the historical development that followed the
Christianization of the Romanians, which unfolded as a unique process, the ethnogenesis and the
ecclesiogenesis being the facets of the same phenomenon. Through its language, the Romanian people are
related to the peoples of the West, and through the Orthodox faith it belongs to the East, and thus
constitutes a permanent challenge for the union of the East with the West.
The two great theories of ethnogenesis (the first: about the Dacian-Roman origin and the
Romanians' autochthony in the Carpatho-Danubian-Pontic geographic area and the second about the
formation of the Romanian people at the south of the Danube, where they migrated north) they cannot
deny the reality of the Romanian miracle: "the island of romance" surrounded by peoples of other origins.
Also, the Byzantine element is part of the cultural, religious and political heritage of the Romanian people.
For the Romanian people, the West and the East are two inner, constitutive realities ab initio.
"We do not go to Europe, we are Europe," synthesizes Dan Zamfirescu. The historical development of
Christian life in Romania took place with the formation of the Romanian people, establishing in the
church tradition the Romanian ethos, even from the fifteenth century. The Romanian Orthodox synthesis
is the complex result of the inculturation of the three major Romanian provinces in which the values of
universal Christianity are found: Wallachia (with Greek theological influences promoted in the theological
schools in Bucharest), Moldavia (with the influence of Russian theology, philocalic spirituality, The
monastic tradition and the capacity of dogmatic crystallizations in the Synod of Iaşi - 1642) and
Transylvania (with the anti-Catholic and anti-reformed apologetic literature, the promotion of the laity and
the Romanian culture through the Church).
The Romanian people, through its geographic location and its Latin language, was and is an
European people. The exegetes of the Romanian culture have noticed humanistic and renaissance
interferences since the 15th and 16th
centuries, even though the medieval conception of the world and life
was dominant. If in these centuries, Western influences were sporadic and intermittent, of small
magnitude, beginning with the Eighteenth century it is recorded a strong Enlightening influence in the
Romanian culture on the Catholic branch in Transylvania and Greek in Moldova and Muntenia. In the
nineteenth century in all the Romanian provinces, the Romantic influence, received from the Greek,
French, Italian and German sources, was added to the Enlightenment cultural adstratum. In the 20th
century, the original Romanian creations penetrate into the European cultural circle through elite
representatives. Brâncuşi, Eliade, Cioran, Enescu, Horia Vintilă and others enjoy a brilliant European and
global appreciation. However, Romanian culture has remained far from being known and valued.
The second approach of our argumentation attempted to provide an overview of the theological
and missionary perspectives of the metaphor ,,bridge between East and West", attributed to the Romanian
Orthodoxy. The salvation of a whole nation depends on understanding and maintaining a living, balanced
and tolerant community spirit. The Romanian civilization is a "symphony between Cultus and Culture", in
which three elements have been synthesized organically: the geography, the people and the Christian faith.
Romanian Orthodoxy is an ecumenical spiritual space because it has declared its determination to remain
in the Ecumenical Movement alongside with other historical Churches (Lutheran and Reformed) with
which it has had missionary, cultural and social relations throughout history, though in the bosom of
Romanian Orthodoxy, there are also critical voices.
The specificity of the Romanian Orthodoxy includes a synthesis report between local and
universal, culture and faith, civil society and the mission of the Church. The Romanian Christian Axiology
presupposes the appreciation of the equal paradigmatic value between the Romanian Orthodoxy and the
other national Orthodox Churches. The universality of the Romanian Orthodoxy must be sought at its
sources, at the level of folk spirituality. The familiarity with God, with whom the Romanian has a deeply
personal love relationship, predisposes him to the maximum openness to the people and the world. Any
local culture is paradigmatic, for (to) the inculturation of faith and of liturgy in a local culture and
civilization means a creative processing of the Holy Tradition (Athens, 1936). Starting with the modern
historical period, the Orthodox Church was forced to delimit from the political and the social, attributes
that the state (of Western conception) constantly tried to capture. The answer formulated by Rev.
Professor Ion Bria, the exclusivist tendencies of etatism are included in the phrase "liturgy after liturgy".
The mission of the Church is important not only for personal salvation but for a whole nation.
Ever since creation, human groups have been organized by God "every one after his tongue, after their
families and in their nations" (Gen.10, 5). The presence of people in the Kingdom of Heaven will be
distinct, personal and community. The Church's preaching (mission) also involves its inner healing, just as
there is a relationship between the path of personal faith and the sacramental community of the Church.
The concept developed by rev. Prof. Ilie Moldovan on ethnicity becomes important for our research
because he tries to capture those "divine nodes, ontological links". Identifying the specificity of the
Romanian Orthodoxy as a "bridge" between the East and the West means the discovery of that reason and
unique "form" that defines the ethnic group and within which it is saved. The salvation of the Romanian
people depends directly on the assumption and the fulfillment of his Christian mission in history.
In the second chapter, which represents the most extensive part of the work, I followed the
historical evolution of the mission (internal and external) of the Romanian Orthodoxy between the 15th
and 18th
century, to prove (scientifically argued) that there is a bridge between the Eastern and Western
spirituality of our continent.
In the first part of the 14th century the process of state crystallization took place in Wallachia
and Moldavia. The existing princes and voivodes have been unified under one ruler. In parallel, the
process of church centralization occurred, so that among several hierarchs, one was elected Metropolitan,
as a representative to the ruler. The principle followed was that "the church organization should adapt to
the political one." The political stability of the Romanian States favored the emergence and the
development of a cultural Renaissance, animated by a secular and a Christian humanism, with its sources
both in the values of Greek and Latin civilization, as well as in the biblical and Christian values. At
present there is a tendency for sacred and profane values to merge into a synthesis culture, to which the
Romanian culture offers the Christian belief of a European note, existential complex, synthetic and
encyclopedic. Neagoe Basarab, Nicolae Milescu, Petru Movilă and Dimitrie Cantemir are secular models
of the Romanian Orthodoxy, who have spiritually solved the political and the military problems of their
time. The solutions offered by them during the complex crises between the East and the West bear the seal
of a responsible dialogue, of Christian solidarity and of the sacrifice against violent Islam. Through our
research we have tried to contribute to the increasing of knowledge, spreading the values of Orthodoxy in
the European secular space and reaffirming the theological-missionary contribution of the Romanian
Christianity.
The Romanians formed as a people and a distinct civilization under the cultural and religious
influence of Byzantium. The Byzantine politics was one of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, racial tolerance
under the umbrella of the Orthodox faith. The period of the 15th-18th centuries, when the Byzantine
civilization was marked by the Turkish and Latin threats, a new nucleus creates, formed around the
synthesis and the irradiation force that Wallachia constituted. They retain a wide autonomy that allows
them to have uninterrupted state and church life so that "a new Orthodox order will be structured in the
South East" (Dan Zamfirescu).
An important part of the internal mission of Romanian Orthodoxy was the material and the
spiritual aid to other Orthodox people, contributing to the survival of the Orthodoxy under the Ottoman
domination. The inter-Orthodox mission initiated and sustained by the Romanian Orthodoxy in the Middle
Ages had a positive role in history.
The scholars and the Greek teachers opened Greek Academies in Iasi and Bucharest, and then
dozens of schools in Greece (Constantinople, Trebizond, Athos, Smyrna, and so on) were subsidized by
the Romanian rulers. Starting with the14th century the contribution of the Romanian Orthodoxy in
Wallachia and Moldavia in support of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos has constantly increased
(donations in money, property, foundations, books, worship objects and ,,worship’’ of Romanian
monasteries). The material support granted to Athos was also the confirmation of the spiritual connection
with the Byzantine Orthodoxy, whose heir was the entire political genealogy of the rulers from Wallachia
and Moldavia. The Romanian aid also went to the church settlements in Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
The historical research of the epoch of Prince Stefan cel Mare confirms the existence of a
fragment of "heroic history". The external mission of the Moldavian Orthodox Church in the 15th century
consisted in the creation of diplomatic relationships with the Western countries, capable of helping the
anti-Ottoman crusade of the Romanian ruler and from the call to common theological themes (the
universality of the Christian faith, divine providence, eschatology). Stefan cel Mare was "a daring and
fearless defender of all Eastern Orthodoxy" (Rev. Prof. Liviu Stan). Through the donations made by the
family alliances, through the intense diplomatic activity (reflected in the official correspondence) and
through the political ambition he carried out an intense missionary activity on behalf of the Romanian
Orthodoxy against the two major threats of the time: the Ottoman offensive with the danger the victory of
the High Bridge (1475), Stefan was aware of his orthodox missionary role, writing to the Western
principles: "Our country ... is the gate of Christendom."
Internally, Stefan cel Mare, was the main supporter of Orthodoxy, identifying his mission as
ruler, with his Christian destiny. Stefan cel Mare "understood to make the Church a lever for the
strengthening of his country and the most powerful help" (Rev. Prof. Liviu Stan). The ruler has endowed
the Moldovan Church with new settlements, restoring the old ones and granting it economic rights and
facilities. The same care was given to the Churches of Transylvania and Wallachia on his possessions, but
also on the Athonite monasteries. The material endowment of the Church influenced its internal mission,
in all respects, believers being educated and guided in monastic centers of cultural irradiation.
The Romanian rulers of the Middle Ages naturally inclined towards a "hearty diplomacy", a
specific concept of Romanian Orthodoxy, which includes paradoxically human tolerance and
intransigence in matters of faith. The diplomatic missions of the Romanian clergy took place on the basis
of the existing church relations, based on common Orthodox faith, and they always involved internal
missionary elements (exchanges of books, church objects, relics of saints, refreshing the relationships
with Romanian monks in Slavic space and vice versa).
The Romanian Orthodoxy had in the person and in the work of the voivode Neagoe Basarab the
main missionary exponent outside and inside the country, with influence among the nobility. The cultural
and religious personality of the Romanian ruler is no less than his counterparts in the West and East,
proving to be their value equal by the affirmation of his Orthodox identity. From the 16th century,
Wallachia remains the only military and spiritual bastion in the path of the Muslim invasion, learning to
adapt to the new Ottoman Empire policy, developing a new strategy of survival by faith, diplomacy and
culture. Historians remember him as a builder in the service of the Church and a protector of the places of
worship in the Romanian and Oriental Orthodoxy. The voivode traveled to Constantinople and
Transylvania, having Catholic sympathies, which is why he sent a message to Pope Leon X. Two
foreigners were part of Neagoe Basarab's diplomatic staff.
From the pages of the main work of the Romanian ruler, The teachings of Neagoe Basarab to his
son Theodosius, there is heard a layman, not a hesychast monk. The ruler proves to be an informed
Christian, not a practitioner of "the prayer of the heart ". Among the Fathers of the Church preferred and
studied by Neagoe Basarab we can include: Saints John Chrysostom, Saint Ephrem and John Climacus.
The struggle of ideas was just on the secondary plan of the armed struggle. The two extremes between
which the entire life of the medieval world places, are "the hieratism and the dynamism", that is, between
the ascetic ideal and the chivalric ideal.
From the Teachings comes the sympathy of the ruler for the Roman Catholic Church. There is
no wrath of confessional polemics in the text. Neagoe calls for the opinion of a dogmatic authority, the
Greek cleric Manuil of Corinth, to clarify the differences between the Orthodox and the Catholics "when
he was preparing to propose to Pope Leon X the union of churches" (Dan Zamfirescu).
The Ruler of Wallachia, Petru Cercel (1583-1585), was a promoter of the Renaissance in the
Romanian Byzantine environment, with pronounced poetic-religious and scientific-encyclopedic
character. His short reign ended like the one of Despot Voda and announced, in time, the tragic fate of
Constantin Brâncoveanu. Peter Cercel allowed the Jesuit monk Antonio Posevinus to evaluate the
possibility of a Catholic mission in Wallachia.
The external correspondence of Prince Mihai Viteazul (1593-1601) is an important documentary
source for the argumentation of the role of the Romanian Orthodoxy as a link between Western and
Eastern Christendom in the 17th century. The struggles for the unification of the Romanian lands or anti-
Ottomans were the visible part of the spiritual struggle for defending the faith.
From the seventeenth century, the "era of the warrior voievodes will end" and it will debut the
diplomatic period, of political negotiations, matrimonial and personal with the political leaders of the time.
The content of four letters sent by Pope Innocent X to the rulers Vasile Lupu of Moldavia and Matei
Basarab of Wallachia testifies, besides the foreign political cooperation between the two Romanian States
and the Papal State, the positive internal religious relations. The External Mission of Romanian Orthodoxy
in the 17th century has seen a progress through the two rulers, the "heralds of ecumenism" that anticipate
"our European integration" (Traian Diaconescu). From the pope's correspondence with Prince Vasile Lupu
we conclude that the relations between the political leadership and the church community (Orthodox or of
other tradition) were unfolding in a context of religious tolerance. The ruler protected and supported a
Roman Catholic community in his country. In Wallachia, the improvement and the intensification of the
relations with the Romano-Catholics are the results of the cultivation of an intense foreign church mission.
Matei Basarab has created a true diplomatic staff made up of trained people (the majority of the
clergy), whose external political mission overlaps with the missionary objectives of Romanian Orthodoxy.
As part of the struggle for the liberation of the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans, Matei Basarab will take
advantage of the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, involved in the war with Persia, to negotiate with the
Christian powers: the German Empire, the Polish Kingdom, the Republic of Venice and the Russian
Empire, hoping to form alliances to support him. The Orthodox Church in Wallachia will actively
participate in the diplomatic approaches of the ruler, by correspondence, clerical translators, symbolic
donations of the relics of saints and efforts of researching the Orthodox theological sources. The zeal of
the ruler for Orthodoxy is also reflected in the efforts to rediscover the written sources of the Orthodox
faith. At the instigation and under the direction of Metropolitan Stephen, a mission will be organized to
search and copy old patristic, liturgical and dogmatic manuscripts to the Holy Land. The Orthodox Church
in Wallachia will actively participate in the diplomatic approaches of the ruler, by correspondence, clerical
translators, symbolic donations of relics of saints and livestock efforts, research of the Orthodox
theological sources. The zeal of the ruler of Orthodoxy is also reflected in the efforts to rediscover the
written sources of the Orthodox faith. At the instigation and under the direction of Metropolitan Stephen, a
mission will be organized to search for and copy old patristic, liturgical and dogmatic manuscripts up to
the Holy Land.
A secular exponent of the Romanian Orthodoxy of the 17th century was Nicolae Milescu
Spataru, a Romanian scholar and diplomat in Europe and Asia. In The travel journal in China, besides the
geographical and ethnological observations recorded by Milescu Spataru, there is also information about
the beliefs and the religious manifestations of the Asian populations encountered, with whom the
Romanian traveler came into contact and undoubtedly changed religious ideas. On his return, he retreated
to Moscow, where he will be on the same side of the barricade with Dimitrie Cantemir, who three decades
later will support the traditional, authentic Orthodoxy of the Holy Fathers in the conflict for the
rehabilitation of the Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich, the opponent of the reforming movement of the Russian
Church. Another point shared with the scholar prince Dimitrie Cantemir was the attendance of the same
Orthodox theology courses of the Patriarchal Academy in Istanbul. These pioneers of the Orthodox
mission activity shared the issues and common dilemmas of the East European space by positioning
themselves at the crossroads of the Muslim and Christian worlds. Such a situation, at the intersection of
cultures, it does not only produce tension but it generates a synthetic opening to the world. Milescu is also
the author of the "Writings on the Faith of the Greeks", included in the year 1669 in the compilation of
dogmatic theology of the French professors at Port-Royal, entitled La Perpétuité de la foi.
During the 18th
century, Dimitrie Cantemir made the Orthodoxy known in Western religious
and cultural space and he remains in the Romanian history as a model of emancipation through education
and critical spirit. Dimitrie Cantemir and his son Antioh excelled in building links between the East and
the West through an intellectual approach of mutual knowledge of the societies, of the cultures and of the
religions. Their destiny is a family, geographical and cultural route that will include the whole of Europe.
The works of the Romanian scholar ruler will remain the most important means of making
Romanian Orthodoxy known in Europe. In 1714, Dimitrie Cantemir was admitted as a member of the
Berlin Academy, whose president was the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. He was perceived
as an orientalist both by Berlin - for which he will write The System or the Making of the Muhammadan
Religion, the History of the Growth and of the Decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Description of
Moldavia, and so on - as well as by Tsar Peter the Great, at whose court he will take refuge after 1711 and
whose counselor on Oriental matters will become. Dimitrie Cantemir received an eminently orthodox
education in a critical spirit. It is known that throughout his life he has preserved and studied a copy of the
complete Bible, of 1688, inherited from his father, Constantin Cantemir. His teacher, Jeremiah Cacavela,
is the author of some dogmatic writings on the differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the
Orthodox Church (1667) and a participant in polemic debates
In the Description of Moldavia (1717), Cantemir manages to make a physical and spiritual
portrait of the country and of its inhabitants with the thought of emancipation, with the desire to enlighten
through culture and to straighten its subjects through education. In the Description of Moldavia are
formulated the objectives of the external and internal mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy in Moldavia.
The main direction of the internal Orthodox mission remained the fight against superstitions and popular
beliefs fueled by the pagan, Dacian background. The author believed that not only the pre-Christian magic
belief constituted a retrograde factor, but also the belonging to the Eastern Christianity. The external
mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy was directed to the restoration of the unity of the Church of the first
millennium, by the return of the Catholics to the Orthodox Church. The efforts of the Romanian
Orthodoxy towards the restoration of the unity would consist in an active expectation of the return home
of the Roman Catholic Church, the "lost brother" (Lk. 15, 11-35).
The Monograph on the Muslim Religion, The System or the Formation of Muhammadan
Religion, was written between1718-1721. From the perspective of the external mission of Romanian
Orthodoxy, there is a gnoseological regression, through the tendentious presentation of the Muslim
religion and a failure in the interreligious relations, dominated by the war.
The personality of the young Dimitrie will discover in Orthodoxy the source of authentic faith,
"in the Protestant erudition an ally against Islam, but also against all-powerful Catholic propaganda"
(Stefan Lemny). His work in the service of the Romanian Orthodoxy was implicit, in the political or the
scientific debts also explicit, through works or meetings, continuing until the last moments of his life. In
1693, he received three Orthodox Patriarchs at the Court, an event that "has never happened in Moldavia.
Respecting the principles of faith, Dimitrie Cantemir will defend the Orthodox Tradition in the conflict
between the Russian Church reformers and the conservative stream. His opinions adapted to the modernity
of the 18th
century, constitutes an important theoretical contribution of the Romanian Orthodoxy to the
renewal of the Russian Church. The missionary, theological, moral, pedagogical ideas and proposed by
the Romanian ruler are evolved for that time, but anchored in the spirit of an authentic Orthodox
Tradition.
Antioh Cantemir, the son of the ruler Dimitrie Cantemir, will have a complex religious
education, being initially educated in the family by Orthodox teachers and by a Protestant professor.
Through his brilliant diplomatic career, Antioch Cantemir represents, from the perspective of the
Romanian Orthodoxy, a landmark of faith with European openness, an Orthodox in a cultural, religious
and heterogeneous international political periplus. As ambassador to London and Paris, Antioch Cantemir
will not hesitate to defend the Orthodoxy, accused by the Western intellectuals of being an obstacle to
modernization. After 1739, in the communication between the Papal Chair (" the First Rome") and the
Orthodox world (to which Moscow, "the Third Rome" claimed to be representative), Antioch Cantemir
was considered the natural diplomatic choice.
In the development of the Romanian medieval state, the bicephal leadership (ruler and
metropolitan) is a weaving of the profane with the sacred, a blessed symbiosis with God. Holiness was
demanded both in the Church and in politics. The distinction between the two spiritualities, the Western
and the Eastern, will be illustrated in the episode of the martyrdom of the Romanian ruler Constantin
Brâncoveanu, documented in the Latin writings of the time (Nicolae Iorga). The 18th century will have in
the person of the prince Constantin Brâncoveanu a capable leader, able of maintaining a climate of
tranquility and prosperity through diplomacy, by cultivating cultural, religious and economic relations
with both the eastern and the western powers. The uniqueness of his case lies in the priority of the eternal
religious values, of the Orthodox faith confessed by martyrdom.
The Brâncovenu family will be executed under the eyes of the Christian ambassadors of the
great powers of the West. Instead, the Romanian ruler always considered himself a defender of the
Orthodox faith and ally of any Christian prince in the anti-Ottoman crusade. The historian notes that the
Orthodoxy of the voivode is a landmark and a criterion. On one hand, he is the "delegate of God among
the Romanians" and, on the other hand, he "has the duty to protect his ecclesiastical decisions with his
secular authority," appointing the leaders of the Church. He sent donations and material aids to the
Christians outside the borders of Wallachia: the Holy Places, Mount Athos, Moldavia and Transylvania.
Through his martyrdom, Constantin Brâncoveanu made his own person a model and a "bridge" between
Eastern and Western Christianity. A red thread of the mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy remains the
succession of its martyrs.
In Transylvania, the Romanian Orthodoxy developed in a politically distinct context in
comparison with Wallachia and Moldavia. The Church organization has influenced the internal mission of
the Church, as the metropolitan's seat or that of the Archbishop of Transylvania was not a stable one, the
monasteries were less numerous and modestly endowed, and the cultural activity was conditioned by the
inferior status of the Romanian nation. The Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania was not a state
religion, official, but on the contrary, a "tolerated" religion, unlike other denominations that had the status
of "being well known".
The missionary activity of the Romanian Orthodoxy in Transylvania in the 15th-18th centuries
could be characterized as counter-mission. The attempts to attract to the Roman Catholicism or Calvinism
monopolized the internal missionary activity of the Orthodox Church toward the preservation of religious
and national identity, confession and Anti proselytism. The efforts of the Transylvanian Romanians were
sustained by the Orthodox brothers in the extra-Carpathian space. The ties between them and the
Orthodox Churches in Moldavia and Wallachia never ceased.
Missionary cultural activities did not lack from Transylvania, although their development did not
take place organized and uninterrupted as in Moldavia and Wallachia. From the 15th
to 16th
century the
first Psalter in the manuscript were preserved, known in Romanian (The Psalter from Voronet, the Psalter
from Schei and the Hurmuzaki Psalter), proof that the internal missionary activity had a history before
these manuscripts. The elaboration of church texts necessary for the cult and for the theology in Romanian
was not due to foreign confessional influences, but to a necessity within the Church and within the
medieval Romanian society.
The conscience of a community founded on Orthodoxy and manifested in the 18th century by
defending the civilization created by it had its center, the foundation and the point of irradiation in the
Romanian States. They will play the role of preservers of the Christian unity in the world politically
exposed to Islam. Behind the "ethnarch" of all the Eastern Orthodox peoples occupied by the Turks, the
ecumenical patriarch carried, sometimes using constraint, on the sultan's behalf, the religious and the
political power in the Balkans. Centralization also included the imposition of the Greek language as the
only liturgical language. The Romanians, on the other hand, used their native fund, which they expressed
in Byzantine forms, creating their own, synthetic and non-Byzantine civilization. The Romanian
Orthodoxy therefore has its own content, original, cast in the Byzantine form.
The mission of Romanian Orthodoxy was influenced by the discovery of the printing (Johannes
Gutenberg, 1450), bringing good things on the activity of multiplication of the church books from us. The
first prints will be in the Slavonic language (hieromonk Macarie, 1508-1512: "Hieratikon", "Octoechos"
and "Tetraevangelia"), but shortly later in the Romanian language: Filip Moldovean's "Catechism" (Sibiu,
1544), in the Cyrillic Romanian, then the Slavic-Romanian Gospel (Sibiu, 1551-1553). To this it is added
the typographical activity of the Deacon Coresi (starting with 1559 in Brasov).
The internal missionary activity of the Romanian Orthodoxy in the second half of the17th
century is linked to the pastoral service of the Metropolitan Dosoftei (1671-1674 and 1675-1686), the first
great Romanian poet (The Psalter in verses, Uniev, 1673). He has the merit of establishing the Romanian
cult poetry on the basis of the folk Romanian language, and he has brought to light the literary means of
his time, using them in his activity as a pastor of the Church of Moldavia.
The Romanian Orthodoxy will enter into the Romania's intellectual, literary and artistic pantheon
through Metropolitan Dosoftei, who remains the "father of Romanian poetry" (George Călinescu). Echoes
of the Psalms, as a profane literary genre, will be found at Mihai Eminescu and Tudor Arghezi. The
"Psalter from Schei" was used in the verse made by the Metropolitan Dosoftei, but the theological and
linguistic relations between the Psalter in verses and the Psalter from Schei prove the fact that the Western
interferences in the Oriental Christianity were superficial and circumstantial in the case of the Romanian
Orthodoxy. The common point of the two translations is the internal missionary necessity of acceding to
the word of the Holy Scripture in the language understood by all the Romanians, but poetically redeemed.
Metropolitan Antim Ivirean (1708-1716) conducted a prodigious missionary, cultural-church
activity. Missionary Spirit, by excellence, the Metropolitan Antim defended the flock that was entrusted to
him, concentrating his efforts on strengthening the authority of the Orthodox Church. A complex
personality, Antim has dedicated his multitude of talents to spreading the word of the Gospel and the
values of Orthodoxy through the printing. Antim coordinated the printing of more than 60 books (in
Romanian, Greek, Slavic, Arabic and Georgian) in the printing houses from Bucharest, Snagov, Rîmnic
and Targoviste, some of his prints were the first editorials for other Orthodox Churches: Bulgarian,
Georgian and Arabic.
Metropolitan Antim's official church relations with the Oriental Christian centers in Jerusalem
and Mount Athos and with the Orthodox Russia were marked by dramatic moments. The bridge between
the East and the West has also seen a missionary flow towards the Romanian States. Here found escapes,
from dangerous historical situations, personalities such as Dositei of Jerusalem, Hrisant Nottara, Gherasim
Palada, the Patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasius IV, Dabbas of Antioch, Ioan Cariofil, Ioan Comnen and so
on. In 1711, Metropolitan Antim will make a difficult political choice, urging voivode Constantin
Brâncoveanu to ally with the Tsar Peter the Great against the Turks. Between the Ottoman Orient and the
West dominated by the Austrians, he believed that the Russians would have been the best compromise of
forming an alliance. The common Orthodox Faith was the main argument for the formation of the national
feeling. The daring of the Metropolitan Antim, supported by Prince Constantine Brâncoveanu, cancels the
Calvinistic missionary attempts and the Catholic propaganda against the Romanian Orthodoxy, and the
Patriarchate of Jerusalem reaches a positive change in its attitude regarding the subordination ("worship")
relations to the Romanian monasteries.
Starting with the founding of the Romanian feudal states we can speak of the hesychastic
influence on the Romanian missionary monasticism. Throughout the history of the Orthodox spirituality in
Romanian, the presence of the Hesychastic practice is constantly found. In the 14th century, around
Gregory of Sinai were also Romanian disciples, which shows that the hesychasm came to us through the
Holy Mount Athos, especially from the Cutlumuş Monastery. From a missionary point of view, the
hesychasm, this "school of perfection", was a factor for the strengthening of the faith of the Orthodox
Christians, an element of progress in thought and writing in Romanian, as well as a link with the Western
Christian spirituality, especially in the 20th century. Beginning with the fifteenth century it began to
circulate in all the Romanian provinces church books about the life and the teaching of the saints, which
included massive extracts from the works of some prominent representatives of the hesychasm. In the 18th
century Romanian monasticism was enriched with the experience of the Athonite tradition brought to the
Romanian States by Paisie Velicicovski and Calinic of Cernica, the current that was preserved even after
their death.
From the perspective of the internal mission, monasticism proposes a model, without imposing a
rule. A note of originality, a specific dimension of the hesychasm of the Romanian Orthodoxy, is a "clear
human mark", with emphasis on temperance and measure. The Romanian hesychasts "retained the
practice of everyday life following the laws of common sense and human powers" (Metropolitan Antonie
Plămădeală), meaning the practical aspects. The specific Romanian monastic spirituality does not exclude
the hesychastic accents but does not depart from the local, balanced and practical spirit of the Orthodox
faith. The monastic tradition of Romanian Orthodoxy has developed over time with the contribution of
great spiritualists who have educated and guided the people through Confession and Communion. The
continuation of the Paisian moment was later realized by two Transylvanians: the abbot Gheorghe of
Cernica (18th century) and the abbot Ioanichie of Sihastria (20th century).
The mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy was also carried out through the philanthropic activity
or gestures of piety (visits, pilgrimages, prayers and veneration of the relics of the saints). Pilgrimages to
the Holy Places (Jerusalem) and Mount Athos were held throughout the Middle Ages, privately organized
and rarely recorded in the documents of the time (the journey diary of the chancellor Stoica Ludescu). The
Romanian Orthodoxy saw itself involved, at this point of convergence, in the transmission of the
Romanian way of piety in the East, as well as in the spiritual and the architectural reception of the
Palestinian and Egyptian Orthodoxy.
In the third chapter we attempted to synthesize the process by which (in the 19th and 20th
centuries) the crystallization of the conscience of nation and language was based on the conscience of the
unity of faith, the role played by the interwar intellectuality in strengthening the external mission of the
Church and the dramatic history of the Church during the communist regime. The process can be traced
step by step in the revolutionary movements of 1784, 1789, 1821, 1848, 1859, 1877-1878 during the
Royal period, the World War II, which will lead to the Communist period (1948-1989), characterized by
the stagnation of the external mission and the reduction to the survival of the internal mission of the
Romanian Orthodoxy. In the nineteenth century the priesthood supported the struggle of the Romanian
people for independence and state unity in all its stages. In the 20th
century, the Romanian Orthodoxy will
shine through the Communist martyrs, through the intellectuals of Orthodox inspiration from the interwar
period, through monasticism and through the missionary enthusiasm of the post-1989 period.
In the 20th
century, great themes related to the historical truths (The Latin origin of the Romanian people,
its continuity in the Carpatho-Danubian-Pontic space), the linguistic (Latin language) and the religious
(the simultaneity of the ethnogenesis with the ecclesiogenesis) are taken from the preoccupations of the
coryphaeus of the Romanian Orthodoxy. The work of the representatives of the Transylvanian School
does not belong to the Romanian Orthodox mission, internal or external, but has its roots in it.
At the border between the 18th
and 19th
centuries, the Romanian culture entered a rapid process
of synchronization with the West, giving rise to ambiguities and conflicts between "forms" (Western) and
"fund" (autochthon and oriental - Titu Maiorescu). The antagonism between form and fund seems to be a
constant of the Romanian history, although, from the perspective of the Romanian Orthodoxy, the church
administrative forms came in the 14th
and 15th
centuries over a fund of authentic Christian life: the
orthodox baptized population, the autonomous monastic hermits, the hierarchs responsible for the parishes
of the principality and voivodeship, a decentralized church hierarchy
Metropolitan Andrei Saguna's contribution to the organization of the Transylvanian Orthodox
Church (through the Organic Statute of 1864), of the Romanian Orthodox Church after the Great Union
(1918) and of other national and autocephalous Orthodox Churches, by taking over the principles and
methods of the Organic Regulation, is one of the most important dimensions of the internal and external
mission of Romanian Orthodoxy in the 19th century. The cultural and the religious atmosphere of the
Romanians in Transylvania was largely influenced by the clergy of the Orthodox Church who, after 1848,
succeeded in re-establishing their own hierarchy.
Being far ahead of his time, Metropolitan Andrei Saguna has outgrown the active and passive
political orientations. The Romanian Orthodoxy in Transylvania transmitted the message of the Gospel in
a civilized form, becoming a model for the future organization of the entire Romanian Autocephalous
Church. We can speak of a direct form of church mission by promoting the cultural, social, economic and
national values created in time by the Orthodoxy in Transylvania, which the Romanians lost in the tumult
of the medieval history and which the Church regained with the its specific missionary means.
In the nineteenth century, in all the Romanian provinces, there was an ideological trend that
aspired to the national emancipation by educating the masses, a movement supported by the noble families
and the Church. The new features of a national community should be the faith in its existence, the
historical identity, common projects, geographical location and belief in the distinctive character of what
we call the "Romanian." According to the French social model, the religious identity no longer defined a
people, but became a secondary element of its existence, manifested in the private life.
Historians are still fascinated by the ethno-national vision of the Romanian state identity, created
by the arrangement of the term "nation" next to the concept of "state", so that the expression "national
state" became a general rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this exclusive way of interpretation,
language and religious confession are essential hermeneutic factors.
In the interwar period, a missionary association of the intellectuals functioned, the Romanian
Orthodox Fraternity, around the dictum "We, without Orthodoxy, would represent the most empty of soul
Latinity" (Father Dumitru Stăniloae). At the same time, the idea of Orthodoxy was emphasized as a binder
and ethnic identity. An example of a historical moment of confusion between mysticism and politics was
the Romanian Legionary Movement (Legion of Michael the Archangel, 1927-1941), who tried to establish
a national religious ideal: "the salvation of the nation."
The beginnings of the Romanian Orthodoxy in the Diaspora, especially in the Central and
Western Europe, are due to a secular popular missionary. Ever since the 18th
century intellectuals, students
and Romanian orthodox merchants from the Germanic and French-speaking countries have endeavored to
found Orthodox religious communities with the support of the Church in the country. In the post-war
period (1950-1960), the spiritual life of the Orthodox Romanians in the Central and the Western Europe
began to be organized in the church by the efforts of Romanian priests in exile or who left Romania during
communism. In many European capitals and cities there will be Romanian Orthodox parishes. On the
other hand, the Romanian Orthodoxy in America has its origins in the first emigration of the Romanians in
the second half of the 19th
century.
We have tried to capture the general lines of the Mission of the interwar intellectuals within the
Romanian Orthodoxy by defining the relations of some outstanding personalities with the Orthodox
Christianity. The historian Nicolae Iorga remarked through the synthesis works in the national, church,
literature, army and trade historiography. Mircea Eliade will define the religious phenomenology (sacred-
profane dialectics). Together with Eugen Ionescu and Emil Cioran will represent the Romanian culture
and spirituality in Europe and in the world. On the other hand, together with Petre Ţuţea and Constantin
Noica, Nae Ionescu embodied the "anti-European theory" of the right, manifested in the interwar period
(1932-1945), with echoes during the Communist-Ceausescu period, of nationalist inspiration (1970-1989).
Nichifor Crainic was the most prominent representative of the Orthodox inspiration thinking.
Other personalities of Romanian philosophy have also been asserted in his "Thinking" magazine: Lucian
Blaga, Tudor Vianu, Mircea Eliade, Dan Botta and Vasile Voiculescu. The theologian and poet Nichifor
Crainic bet on interwar youth for a living and efficient Christian mission. He also emphasized that the
institution of the Romanian Orthodox Church has the duty to missionary channel the energy of youth and
to discern its positive and negative trends. Nichifor Crainic wanted the missionary responsibility of the
Romanian Orthodox Church. The Church's contra mission should be directed against the "daily drugs of a
young soul": moral uncensored printing, radio and cinema. His theological work is a synthesis between
the Tradition of the Orthodox Faith and the Romanian Psychology, and the poetic work is of sOrthodox
Romanian mystical and mythological inspiration.
An active secular missionary association in the 20th
century in the Romanian Orthodoxy is "The
Army of Lord". We have tried in our work to outline how the "Army” is reflected within Romanian
Orthodoxy. The Romanian Orthodoxy has benefited, by a secular religious phenomenon, by a revival of
popular moral life.
The Romanian Orthodoxy in the Soviet Communism and Communist nationalism had an
ambiguous and paradoxical status. The Romanian socialist state did not publish a special decree to
radically separate the state from church, but in 1948 it promulgated a law regulating the "general regime
of religion". Without clearly proclaiming the separation of the state from the Church, the Romanian
People's Republic promoted a duplicate attitude, mentioning in the Constitution of 1948 that the Orthodox
Church is a "unified one, having its own leader" but at the same time subsidizing the clergy and the
institutions of religious education.
Through the new Statute of Organization of the Romanian Orthodox Church (1949), the
separation of state did not in reality excluded the possibility of collaboration and support of the Church by
the Communist state. The Romanian Christian nationalism infiltrated in the interwar theological thinking
through the fusion of Romanism, perpetuating itself during the communist regime. In the interwar period,
Nichifor Crainic regarded the state as a laic, neutral and inefficient factor, capable in fact to eliminate by
the force of laws any kind of Orthodox missionary activity. The state was closer to Bolshevism than
fascism. Several decades later, Nicolae Ceausescu took over the themes of interwar nationalism, using
them for the propaganda of the Communist state.
Unlike the Russian Orthodoxy, the Romanian one benefited from an atypical relationship with
the Communist state. Eastern European communist regimes have proposed to liquidate the institution and
the factor that contributed most to the creation of modern civilization and national states: the Church and
the Christianity. The political compromise made by the leaders of the Romanian Orthodoxy after 1948
allowed the continuation of the internal missionary activity, benefiting, besides the immovable goods kept
in property, by higher education institutions and ten theological publications.
The main mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy in Communism was not the material survival of
the institution and the statistical preservation of the number of believers, but "the confession of the Truth.
Orthodoxy is truth "(Metropolitan Nicolae Mladin). Perhaps the most important contribution to clarify the
mission of Romanian Orthodoxy during the communist regime were the witnesses and the martyrs in the
forced labor camps and prisons (the mines from Jiu Valley, Danube-Black Sea Canal, Aiud, Jilava, Pitesti,
and so on ). The confession of truth is fully realized in the saints. They are "the witnesses of the work of
God in history", the supreme missionary attitude, which underpins the faith of the Church.
The pilgrimages and the canonization of the saints have been effective missionary means and
unity factors of the Romanian Orthodoxy. Beginning with the 20th century, with the gradual
industrialization of the Romanian urban society, the extension of the road networks and railways
throughout the country and the increase of the labor mobility of the peasants and of the townspeople
(especially from the 1950s), the frequency of the pilgrimages in the monasteries in the country and to the
religious objectives abroad have steadily increased, motivated by the presence of the great confessors from
the monasteries and the existence of the relics of saints. Whole families, from the farthest corners of the
country, found themselves in prayer, in worship, in religious processions.
The 20th century meant, in the context of the ecumenical relations, a revival of the Orthodox
spirituality of monastic tradition within the mission of the Romanian Orthodoxy. In the West, Romanian
Orthodoxy was made known, especially in the Protestant theological environments, by the liturgical and
the spiritual dimensions.
In the fourth chapter we dealt with the recent period after the Revolution of 1989, when the
typology of state-church relations is overcome by the dramatic of the historical relations between the State
forms and the Romanian Orthodoxy. Now is the moment when our own Romanian way of living the
Orthodox faith goes beyond the limits of the Church's institution. After 1989, the missionary activity of
the Romanian Orthodoxy was marked by the negative attraction of an oppressive past and a future
promising the seemingly unlimited development of the missionary activities expected and desired by the
overwhelming majority of its faithful ones. The debate is more complex than it seems, because there is the
danger of reducing the steps in three directions of opinion already made templates: 1) The Romanian
Orthodox Church was "completely obedient, even collaborative with the communist regime"; 2) The
Orthodox Church was "a total martyr of the communism" and 3) The Orthodox Church was indifferent to
what happened in the communism, being an archaic institution, obsolete. The Romanian Constitution, in
force since 1991 and amended in 2003, provides a model of collaboration "based on the principle of the
separation / collaboration of the State-Church, that is to say, the autonomy of the Church," which thereby
wants to delimit itself from the sphere of politics. Instead, the State is generally based on religious norms
and values, but displays equidistance and confessional neutrality. "
In the relationship between the genuine Orthodox communities of the Western European
Orthodoxy and the East European Orthodoxy, the Romanian Orthodox Church has the most dynamic,
numerous, well-represented territorial and open ecumenical presence. The mission of the Romanian
Orthodoxy in Europe, in predominantly Roman Catholic or Protestant countries, is achieved with
increased efficiency due to the communities of intellectuals (students, scholars, researchers, professors,
and so on.), whose number grew vertiginously after 1989, in a demographic movement known as "the
brain migration". The missionary tendencies of the Romanian Orthodoxy after 1989 are more complex and more
dynamic than in the past (the recovery of youth, the need for evolution in the state-church relationship, the
specialization of urban and rural missions, the need for meaning in the Romanian society, the highlighting
of the missionary contribution of the laity, the re-evaluation of the use of the modern media, of the public
religious education, the liturgical and canonical solution of mixed marriages, and so on.). Recent
Romanian Orthodoxy has evolved in the direction of recovering and rebuilding the stages lost in the years
of communism (educational, cultural and philanthropic activity), but it has stagnated by the tendency to
justify its duplicitous attitude from the past, the feeding of nationalism and the inevitable historical errors.
The Romanian Patriarchate developed an unprecedented missionary administrative structure
after 1989 (establishing seven autonomous diocese in the diaspora), showing that it is interested in the
pastoral and the salvation of Orthodox believers who, due to material difficulties, for professional
affirmation or for family reunification, chose to settle in other countries in Europe and around the world.
In the last decade, the Romanian Orthodox Diaspora has developed modern missionary methods and
means (many adapted from the profane world or from the missionary experience of other cultures) specific
to the ecclesial needs.
The main feature of the external mission of Romanian Orthodoxy seems to be the preservation of the
national and spiritual identity of the Romanians emigrated after 1989. The Romanian Church has become
the most full of content and institutional stable over the past two decades, superior to the forms of state
representation (embassies, consulates, Romanian ethnic associations). The sociologists find out the
advantages of the Romanian Orthodoxy compared to other Orthodoxies from diaspora.
The spiritual destiny of the Orthodox Romanians in the diaspora has been a constant concern of the
Romanian Orthodoxy since 1989, when their number has risen sharply, and ties with the country could be
kept easier due to the freedom of movement and communication. The salvation of a people is not limited
to its geographical boundaries but it includes the rise of all its members no matter where they live their
lives. The spiritual ties, by cultivating the knowledge of the Romanian language, of the Romanian cultural,
scientific and religious values, were maintained and amplified primarily by the Orthodox Church.
The Romanian cultural model cannot be dissociated from the model of the Romanian
Orthodoxy. The debate on the "European integration" brings the cultural and religious aspects back to
face. Ever since the nineteenth century the Romanian culture inherited the double complex: western and
eastern. The Romanian Orthodoxy has taken important steps to adapt to the western culture of the 20th
century, thanks to the high-level academic theology, professed by the theologians from the theology
faculties in Bucharest and Sibiu and reflected in the theological journals. The model of historical synthesis
and adaptation proposed by Adrian Marino (also found in the theological thinking of Prof. Ion Bria)
teaches "to be Romanian and European at the same time".
The long debate about the regaining of the status of "National Church" or "State Church"
oscillated between the pros and the cons of modern European or medieval historical contextualization, but
the red thread constituted the tendency to report to external models, ignoring its own historical model .
The phrase "National Church" is a resumption of a century-old theme.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is undoubtedly the oldest complex institution (with liturgical,
cultural, philanthropic and missionary attributions) in the entire Romanian geographic space. We have
noticed in the preceding chapters the evolution and some significant moments of ecclesiastical historical
development, missionary contributions and failures with the goal of their objective assessment in a present
that our generation is responsible for. After 1989, the Church is subjected to "the assault of secularization
and of laity "after for four decades (1948-1989) it faced a secular and lay ideology of the opposite
direction. Romanian Orthodoxy is institutionally represented in the country and in the diaspora through a
number of religious units (parishes and monasteries), the number of which has steadily increased since
1989. The editorial and the publishing activity recorded the largest quantitative increase in the history of
Romanian Orthodoxy, being exceeded in qualitative terms by the theological magazines from 1948-1989,
when their content, number and circulation were controlled by the Communist state authorities.
The current image of the Romanian Orthodox Church (institutional and charismatic) is mirrored
in the forming history, from the beginnings of the apostolic Christianity in Dobrogea, through the episodes
of institutional ecclesiastical foundation in the Middle Ages (in the Romanian states: Wallachia, Moldavia
and Transylvania) and up to the recent institutional crystallisation of the 19th
-20th
centuries. At present,
the essential elements of the Romanian theological synthesis are: the structural combination of the
Orthodox cult and the Latin culture, the Eucharistic civilization of a community practicing “the liturgy
after the Liturgy”, the exceptional theological school, which formulated the "creative and inventive
reception of the diachronic tradition", the consistency of the role played in the Ecumenical Movement.
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